President Chirac was quite right to warn yesterday that France faced a dangerous situation after a sixth night of rioting in Parisian suburbs largely inhabited by immigrants. Mercifully, no one has been killed in the disturbances but cars and buildings have been gutted and the already fragile relations between the police and the people have been further damaged.
Many different threads have come together to produce this knot of community tension. The immediate cause of the first riot, the electrocution of two North African youths allegedly fleeing police, unleashed wider grievances among immigrants who feel themselves disadvantaged and ignored by the French state. Poor schooling, bad housing and a lack of jobs create alienated youths and gang cultures where violence is never far from the surface.
Nevertheless, such difficult social circumstances are not unique to immigrant communities in Paris. Local leaders and the young people themselves must bear some responsibility for their hopeless lives. Certainly nothing can justify their going on destructive rampages.
That said, the French authorities seem to have inflamed rather than calmed tempers. The use of the CRS anti-riot police has clearly worsened the troubles. This force has been deployed because Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy is playing the “zero tolerance” card on public disorder. His pronouncements have been hardly less severe. He has called the rioters “scum.” Unfortunately this approach also hits at perfectly law-abiding immigrants within the capital’s grumbling suburbs and thus only adds another general sense of grievance.
Another important thread in this complex knot is the rivalry between Sarkozy and his prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, to win their UMP party’s backing to try to succeed Chirac as president in 2007. Sarkozy appears prepared to go out on a limb to be tough with the rioters while Villepin, who postponed a Canadian trip because of the disturbances, seems to be trying to be more emollient. When it comes to immigration issues, however, all centre-right politicians are aware of the still potent far-right National Front. So far the most notable manifestation of this process has been the ban on Muslim headscarves in schools. Therefore more than a simple restoration of calm and order to these Parisian suburbs is at stake here. If Sarkozy’s hard-line solution works he will have won a victory over the prime minister. If it does not, the charismatic politician may be politically damaged.
All the while, both politicians and others within the ruling UMP will be looking nervously over their shoulders at the National Front. On the face of it, these are not obviously the best grounds on which to sort out the tensions that have caused these suburbs to explode which at best may merely be swept under the carpet. Worse, what has happened in Paris could equally well occur among other immigrant communities. Lawlessness should not be tolerated in any civilized society, but equally neither should the social deprivations that bring it about.
